


tonight i need your sweet caress

by orgiastique



Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Domestic, Established Relationship, Fluff, Kissing, M/M, Post-Blue Lions Route (Fire Emblem: Three Houses), Post-Canon, Post-War, Sleepy Cuddles, quiet flutters of the heart are my entire sense of justice, sexual touching in a non-sexual manner, soft as heckies, warm sylvix soup for the soul
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-31
Updated: 2020-03-31
Packaged: 2021-03-01 02:33:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,597
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23417512
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orgiastique/pseuds/orgiastique
Summary: It begins with Felix's fingertips ghosting over his arm as he's undressing for bed. Then, the fingers gain ground. A palm against his shoulder blade, over scar tissue that outlines the wing of bone, sliding up and over to the top knob of his spine, then down his neck.Sylvain doesn't turn, not yet, casting aside the last of his clothing. Felix keeps touching him.
Relationships: Felix Hugo Fraldarius/Sylvain Jose Gautier
Comments: 22
Kudos: 128





	tonight i need your sweet caress

**Author's Note:**

> post-war sylvix who are not married but are kinda married. they touch each other late at night. that's the whole fic. title is from "breathe" by hands to heaven, a song about a past sylvix might've been forced to face at some point during the war that they never wish to think about again.

Some nights, it happens slow—so slow—because they have nowhere else to be but here. Gone are the days cooped up in tents, every touch a push, a shove, a clash. An act of passion that bordered on desperation, with no assurance of _next time_.

It begins with Felix's fingertips ghosting over his arm as he's undressing for bed. Then, the fingers gain ground. A palm against his shoulder blade, over scar tissue that outlines the wing of bone, sliding up and over to the top knob of his spine, then down his neck.

Sylvain doesn't turn, not yet, casting aside the last of his clothing. Felix keeps touching him.

They're chatting quietly about their day. Council meetings. Lowered taxes for small farmers. Lord Archibald's frumpy wig. Petty land disputes to the east. Harvest season soon. Those Who Slither in the Darkness.

Felix's hand halts its leisurely exploration. His mouth begins to move in its stead, fast and heated, and his mind is revving up to speed again, the gears whirring. The mental equivalent of reaching for his sword. 

_Oops,_ Sylvain muses.

He twists around, poking a finger between where Felix's brows furrow. He laughs when the pleats deepen.

"Easy, there." Now Sylvain touches his other hand to Felix's, the one that's not on him yet. He traces circles and swirls and ellipses over the sword-calloused skin, over all the places it's cracked and rough and all the places it's still raw and tender.

The words slow over Felix's tongue until it's just: "Sylvain—"

"Shhh." Sylvain links his fingers loosely with Felix's and bends down to kiss, feather-soft, the long line that curves from above Felix's thumb to below it, just near his wrist. He brushes his lips over the crease that separates Felix's hand from his arm, and then over the pale, translucent wrist-skin that covers blue and green veins, an indistinct maze of color that writhes sinuously up the forearm.

Then, Felix is slipping from his hold, his hands sliding over Sylvain's shoulders, to steady himself and to pull him closer. In the grey-blue dimness, Sylvain can barely make out the lines of Felix's face, but he knows by heart how to find his way home. They meet and part a few times lazily, eyes open, before Sylvain parts his lips and Felix gasps quietly. Sylvain's tongue darts out to slide across Felix's lower lip, and like an instinctive response Felix opens his mouth to welcome him in.

The kiss deepens. For a moment there's a lick of fire in the way they sweep over each other, set aspark by the hot friction of their lips, the rough abrasion of Sylvain's rusty beard against Felix's cheek like a line of signal flares, ovals and crescents and the shape of grass-stems blown by the wind. But then they pace down, relax, remember the war's end. Sylvain feels Felix's heart slow under his palm. The sigh that he breathes into Sylvain's mouth is one of comfort, of relief, like the weight of a heavy comforter over your chest. 

When Sylvain is confident that he has sufficiently distracted Felix from thoughts of Those Who Shall Not Be Named, he pulls them both into bed. He savors the way that Felix, a very serious man of a very fun size, fits neatly into the nooks and crannies of his own taller, broader body. Felix is no hurried, secret corner, though. There are many hours of the day when he is all Sylvain can think of, the very axis around which Sylvain's mind orbits.

In the early morning, to name one such example, between the first time Sylvain wakes and the second, he'll catch Felix asleep still, dark eyelashes fluttering as he dreams. When he sleeps, his face is smooth, none of the creases on his brow like when he argues with his advisors in the council room, and no devious wrinkle at the corners of his eyes like when he's trapped a tricky opponent on the training grounds. Sylvain's gaze would dip down to his mouth—lips slack and parted just the tiniest bit—and he'd think, groggily, absently, _I could kiss him,_ and lean in to do just that.

Sylvain is learning that Felix, too, thinks of him often. When he's least expecting it, there is Felix at his hip, joining him out by the stables. There is Felix leaving imprints of warm lips through the sweat-soaked fabric of Sylvain's shirt as they shelve their wooden weapons. There is Felix with his head dropped against Sylvain's shoulder as they read a letter from Dimitri, informing them of his engagement to the professor in advance of the public announcement.

And then there's the way Felix rubs just inward of the cuff of Sylvain's shoulder, where the muscles grow stubborn on damp, nasty days like today. 

"Fuck," Sylvain groans. "Right there."

Felix huffs proudly. He rolls his hand against the stiff spot with the same motions his mother used to knead bread in the kitchen of Fraldarius Keep. Slim wrists undulating in wave-like strokes, easing the dough into silken smoothness. Sylvain wonders if Felix has any memory of that.

"I kept telling you to take your training seriously," Felix grouches. "And now see? All these pains haunt you."

"Yes, my sweet," replies Sylvain. He earns himself a glare.

Felix keeps working the knot at Sylvain's shoulder, moving to the rhythm of their soft breathing. At some point, his hand begins to wander—sneaky, sneaky—until he's less massaging an old ache and more groping his favorite toy. One of his favorites, anyway. He nestles his head against Sylvain's other breast, teasing his finger over the bump of a nipple. It buds under the attention, and they're both content to leave it at that.

Sylvain pulls Felix's left leg, the one with the bad knee, carefully over his own hip. He smooths his hand up the hard, lean length of it from ankle to thigh, going against the grain of fine hairs that grow straight and flat against the skin. Felix wrinkles his nose, ruffled like a cat stroked the wrong way, but doesn't stop groping Sylvain's breast. 

So Sylvain continues up Felix's thigh until he's between them, cradling a familiar weight in the palm of his hand. He dances his fingertips over the cotton of Felix's smalls, and there again he dabbles in geometry. No sense of intent or purpose, touching just to be touching. Felix leans in with his hips, not really grinding, just seeking the simple pleasure of being touched. 

Biology seems to have other ideas, though.

"You wanna continue?" Sylvain asks, tracing Felix's thickening shape. He's only flirting, really. Their sluggish movements suggest that they'll be faster giving in to sleep than to mutual orgasm.

Felix doesn't use his words to answer, as is often the case. He grunts, hand falling from Sylvain's breast to find the one between his legs. Their fingers twine together instantly, by muscle memory, as Felix brings them to eye-level. Sylvain counts sixteen heartbeats, watching Felix brush his lips over his crooked, split knuckles. For all of Felix's aversion to knighthood, he paints a damn convincing picture of one professing his affections to his favored maiden.

"Oh dear," Sylvain teases, “but what does that _mean_?"

"I love you," Felix says immediately, and Sylvain hears himself make a sound like crushed air at the plainspoken honesty. "It means I love you."

Suddenly, he has Felix crushed flush against his chest. 

Sylvain has spent so long not daring to dream but dreaming all the same. Dreaming of a world where every time Felix whispers at him to open his eyes it will not because he's afraid he'll never see them again; where they can fall asleep next to each other holding hands, tell each other good night, and not wonder if this will be the last time those words leave their lips; where the most intimate of confessions is not a trembling "I'm so glad you're alive" but a steady "I'm so, so in love with you."

It's only been recent since that dream became reality. Battered heart thrashing madly in his chest, Sylvain knows he isn't yet fully adjusted to the changes.

“Good,” he says when he can speak. "I love you, too. I want to keep you."

Felix raises an eyebrow. "Is that a question?"

"It's a statement of intentions."

"Coward."

Sylvain smiles. "You've always been the braver of us."

"You were braver at age twelve, making promises of dying together with me."

"That's different," Sylvain says. "Now we're talking about staying alive together."

"And that's harder?"

"It's _better_." Sylvain brushes a wayward strand of Felix's inky hair away from his face. "I want to do better than a pinky promise in your backyard."

Felix sighs, casting his eyes away. "It's not _better_ that I need, stupid."

It's _I love you, always._

It's _I need you, forever_.

It's _you, by my side._

Sylvain swallows around tightness in his throat, overwhelmed with wonder that he'd ever been allowed to know Felix's heart and body in the way that he does. He pulls in Felix's head, tucks him away for safekeeping. 

The wind whistles through the cracks in Fraldarius Keep—but inside, they are warm and protected and alive and alive and alive and _alive_. Sylvain feels Felix's heart slow and breathing steady. He thinks about the smooth lines of his face. He presses a kiss to the midnight of Felix's hair.

"Hey, Fe?" he whispers softly—so softly. "Ever heard of a touch so tender, it slayed the demons in a man?"

**Author's Note:**

> felix: go the fuck to sleep u drama queen
> 
> [RT this fic](https://twitter.com/orgiastique/status/1245110217580384256?s=20) | [talk to me about fe3h/sylvix/cats](https://twitter.com/orgiastique)


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